Prophet of intolerance
by George Jonas
National Post
December 16, 2009
The German magazine Der Spiegel writes that a recent Swiss vote to ban the building of minarets "is generating intense debate: Just how much of Islam is predominantly Christian Europe prepared to accept?" Good question, but another question may be even better: "How much of Christian Europe is militant Islam prepared to accept?" The answer is: "Not much" or even: "Not any."
It's one of our illusions that we all inhabit the same world. In a sense we do, but in many essentials, we don't. We may be standing next to each other on the same escalator or subway platform, but some of us have our feet firmly planted in the 12th century. It complicates matters that the 21st century itself may be in the process of flipping numbers and reverting to the 12th century.
Not a good idea. Even without weapons of mass destruction, the High Middle Ages were pretty grim. With weapons of mass destruction they could be calamitous.
People who sincerely believe that tolerance is a virtue share the planet with people who just as sincerely believe that it's a sin. While Christian Europe frets that it may be insufficiently tolerant, militant Islam worries that it hasn't placated Allah enough through istishhad (martyrdom.)
Before there was Osama bin Laden, there was Dr. Abdullah Azzam. An icon in Islamist circles, the author of Defense Of Muslim Lands, a Fatwa in four chapters, is known only to a handful of scholars, war correspondents and intelligence analysts in the West. Steve Emerson describes him in Abdullah Azzam: The Man Before Osama Bin Laden as "more responsible than any Arab figure in modern history for galvanizing the Muslim masses to wage an international holy war against all infidels and non-believers until the enemies of Islam were defeated."
"One hour in the path of jihad is worth more than 70 years of praying at home," said Dr. Azzam, and he meant it. The godfather of jihad wasn't in the habit of speaking lightly. He also said (in Join The Caravan) "Jihad and rifle alone. No negotiations. No conferences and no dialogue."
Dr. Azzam's encyclopedia entry has him sounding like Pol Pot on a productive day: "History does not write its lines except with blood. Glory does not build its lofty edifice except with skulls; honour and respect cannot be established except on a foundation of cripples and corpses."
Chances are Dr. Azzam said these very things to his disciples while standing on a subway platform waiting for his train to Brooklyn. In fact, he probably did, back in the 1980s, during one of his many da'wah (propaganda) tours in the United States, encouraged by the Reagan administration to radicalize and recruit Muslim youth against the Soviet invader in Afghanistan. One can't blame the Reagan administration for this -- at least, I don't -- because in the 1980s, the big threat still seemed to come from Moscow rather than Mecca, even if the Ayatollah Khomeini's handwriting had already appeared on the wall in Tehran.
For Dr. Azzam, the jihad started in Afghanistan against the Soviets, but it didn't end there. A Palestinian by birth, he found the presence of Jews in Palestine just as sacrilegious as the presence of Russians in Afghanistan. Strictly speaking, the presence of unbelievers seemed to him a sacrilege anywhere in the world, except perhaps as payers of tribute to believers. As he wrote: "It is not permitted to include a condition in the treaty that relinquishes even a hand span of Muslim land to the kuffar (unbeliever) ... With reference to the Russians, it is not permitted to negotiate with them until they retreat from every hand span of Afghan territory. With the Jews in Palestine, likewise."
But what about the kuffar's own lands, such as Christian Europe? Dr. Azzam had no qualms. It's the duty of the Imam to recruit and send an army "at least once a year to terrorize the enemies of Allah." Bin Laden's comrade-in-arms quoted the scholars who expressed the view that "jihad (struggle) is da'wah (propaganda) with a force, and is obligatory to perform with all available capabilities, until there remains only Muslims or people who submit to Islam."
Tolerance may be at the heart of modernity, but it appears senseless to pre-enlightenment minds. A medieval person reasons, logically enough, that if he believes his religion to be true, all other religions must be false by definition, and tolerance for falsity in sacred matters has to be sinful. It can't be anything else.
Inviting a 12th-century believer to be tolerant of another person's religion is like inviting an environmental activist to be tolerant of global warming. Islam's very name means "submission." It's a believer's duty to be intolerant of an unbeliever's failure to submit to the true faith. Dr. Azzam certainly did what he perceived as his duty until the day someone blew him up in 1989.
What about contemporary Western liberal societies whose "religion" is tolerance, asks Der Spiegel. Will they be tolerant of intolerance, too?
Some, yes, no doubt. The Swiss, not so much.